[Gshaheen]

One other differentiation that Vanguard has is that it is owned by the fund holders

“Vanguard set out in 1975 under a radical ownership structure. Our company is owned by its funds, which in turn are owned by Vanguard’s fund shareholders. We focus on meeting the investment needs of our clients.”

So in short, vanguard is customer-owned, where fidelity is owned by mostly the founding family (the Johnson’s).

https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/c...

[londons_explore]

But does that structure confer any realistic chance of voting control by any real humans who aren't already employed by vanguard?

Funds aren't known for being voting activists.

[ElevenLathe]

Even so, I think the incentives are still for the Vanguard management to make as little profit as possible so that they can compete and have more funds under management. Controlling more billions of dollars of stock shares is kind of its own reward and brings many opportunities for enrichment, and if they don't have to worry about making money for shareholders, they can pretty much always engineer the lowest fees.

[Gshaheen]

Starting end of Nov 2024, Vanguard is actually beginning to roll out proxy voting capabilities to fund holders (in the US). This looks to be the beginning of deeper proxy voting capabilities, but not much information out there yet.

https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/c...

[feoren]

Would you rather be a dairy cow on a farm owned collectively by the dairy cows, or owned by one billionaire family? Is it that hard to see how that's immediately a huge positive even if you can't identify individual instances of the billionaire abusing their position?

[fallingknife]

This is academic. I have equal control over both, which is to say none whatsoever. Capacity to influence a company falls to the following (in order)

1. Executives

2. Large shareholders (usually institutional and rarely individuals)

3. Customers

4. Employee unions (if present)

The tech industry is an anomaly where 1 and 2 largely overlap, but this is not true in most industries. Unless you are super rich, you will never be able to have more influence over a large company than you do in the role of a pissed off customer ready to take his money elsewhere.

[richid]

This alone is why I will always choose Vanguard if possible.